U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and aide Huma Abedin speak before Clinton chairs the Security Council Session on Women, Peace and Security, September 30, 2009, at United Nations headquarters in New York.

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton’s campaign said the former secretary of state did not personally sign the paperwork that shifted then-Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s position to a “special government employee” status, allowing the longtime Clinton aide to work at the State Department at the same time she was advising a private consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon confirmed to CBS News that Cheryl Mills, the then-secretary’s chief of staff, was the official who signed off on Abedin’s change to SGE status.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained documents authorizing the title change that showed the former secretary of state listed as an “Immediate Supervisor” to Abedin. The form, in a “supervisory certification,” reads: “I certify that this is an accurate statement of the major duties and responsibilities of this position and is organizational relationships, and that the position is necessary to carry out Government functions for which I am responsible.” Hillary Clinton’s typed name and title appear in the box below it.

The documents were signed March 23, 2012, though the State Department has blocked out the signature.

Ms. Abedin’s work on the Sept. 20, 2012, event at the glamorous Essex House in New York City, helped entertain potential Teneo clients, wowing them with access to three former world leaders on a single stage.

It was one of the specific projects she worked on with Teneo during a seven-month period in which she earned a $15,000-a-month consulting fee from the firm while simultaneously receiving pay as a “special government employee” advising Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, according to interviews and documents.

Hillary Clinton personally signed deal that let top aide collect two salaries

Hillary Rodham Clinton personally signed the controversial deal in 2012 that let her top aide Huma Abedin simultaneously work for the State Department and a private New York firm with deep ties to the Clinton family, according to records made … more >

Hillary Rodham Clinton personally signed off on the controversial deal in 2012 that let her top aide Huma Abedin simultaneously work for the State Department and a private New York firm with deep ties to the Clinton family, according to records made public Thursday.

The State Department emails released to select congressional committees and the watchdog group Judicial Watch also show that almost immediately after Ms. Abedin got permission to work in New York for the Teneo Group, she tried to get the federal government to pay the cost of her commuting back and forth to Washington to serve as a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton, who was then the secretary of state.

“I need to come down to state tomorrow. Can state start paying for my travel since ny is now my base?” Ms. Abedin asked in an email to a top State Department administrative official on March 27, 2012, around the time her deal to become a special government employee (SGE) was struck.

Federal investigators formally investigated top Hillary Rodham Clinton aide Huma Abedin for the crime of embezzlement after confirming she took a “Babymoon” vacation and maternity time at the State Department without expending her formal leave, resulting in thousands of dollars of pay she wasn’t entitled to receive, The Washington Times has learned.

The probe also gathered evidence she filed time sheets charging the government for impermissible overtime and excessive hours after she converted from a full-time federal employee to a State Department contractor.

Those time-cards were filed during a period that remains under investigation over questions about possible conflicts of interest, documents gathered by the State Department inspector general show.

Best-selling author Nomi Prins warns, “Never before have the Government and the Fed collaborated so extensively by propping up the banking system to the detriment of the population.” Prins lays out a long history of the relationships between U.S. Presidents and bankers that date back to Teddy Roosevelt and JP Morgan. On her new book titled “All the Presidents’ Bankers,” Prins contends, “That connection with Teddy Roosevelt was a very powerful established entity between two people that has allowed all this stuff that has happened in the last hundred years to really happen. The friendships, the social ties, the idea that the bankers could sort themselves out with Treasury Department help if it needed to. Of course, it’s epic now. All of that was solidified then. Banks being hands-off with respect to the oval office was all solidified then. We’ve only been consolidating that message throughout the century since.”

Fast forward to JFK and the bankers of the day, and Prins points out the banks in the early 1960’s didn’t want a gold standard to restrict them. It is dollar debasement history as Prins explains, “If bankers have a peg, if they have to put gold or any type of asset behind it or have any restriction, they don’t like it. So at the time, they weren’t working on trying to demolish the regulations that happened from the 1930’s to separate bank speculation from depositors, but they saw something else, and that was getting off gold. They really worked to push JFK off of gold. JFK was a little less friendly with the bankers. JFK, when he did invite bankers to the White House, he would have very short meetings. It was like hello, goodbye and thank you. Where LBJ, who came after JFK, was very friendly to the bankers and opened the White House to the bankers.”

The US and Britain have both made ‘crisis calls’ to President Putin to warn him to respect territorial boundaries

A treaty signed in 1994 by the US and Britain could pull both countries into a war to protect Ukraine if President Putin’s troops cross into the country.

Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma – the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine – agreed to the The Budapest Memorandum as part of the denuclearization of former Soviet republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Technically it means that if Russia has invaded Ukraine then it would be difficult for the US and Britain to avoid going to war.

The revelation comes as reports suggest the Kremlin was moving up to 2,000 troops across the Black Sea from Novorossiysk to their fleet base at Sevastopol.

At least 20 men wearing the uniform of the Russian fleet and carrying automatic rifles surrounded a Ukrainian border guard post in a standoff near the port yesterday.

The Budapest Memorandum was signed in 1991 by Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma – the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine. It promises to protect Ukraine’s borders, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons

Last night it was still unclear the exact scale of Russian boots on the ground in Crimea or the identity of gunmen who have taken over airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol – though reports suggest they are Russian marines or Moscow- controlled militias.

The action came as President Obama delivered blunt warnings to Moscow.

‘We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,’ he told reporters at the White House.

‘Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing,’ he said in a brief appearance.

‘The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.’

U.S. officials also said the President could scrap plans to attend an international summit in Russia and take negotiations on deepening trade ties with the country off the table in response to Russian involvement in the Ukraine.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel added: “This could be a very dangerous situation if this continues in a provocative way.”

Asked about options in a CBS News interview, he said that “We’re trying to deal with a diplomatic focus, that’s the appropriate, responsible approach.”

Both the U.S. and the UK are advising against all non-essential trips to Ukraine – especially Crimea.

former British Ambassador to Moscow Sir Tony Brenton, who served as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008, said in an interview that war could be an option ‘if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding.’

NATO also asked Russia not to take action that could escalate tension. However Moscow responded by telling the organization to ‘refrain’ from provocative statements on Ukraine and respect its ‘non-bloc’ status.

Sir Tony Brenton, who served as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008, said that war could be an option ‘if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding.’

It promises to protect Ukraine’s borders, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

Kiev has demanded the agreement is activated after insisting their borders had been violated.

In response Mr Brenton said in a BBC radio interview: ‘If indeed this is a Russian invasion of Crimea and if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding then it’s very difficult to avoid the conclusion that we’re going to go to war with Russia’.

Ukraine accused Russia of a ‘military invasion and occupation’, saying Russian troops have taken up positions around a coast guard base and two airports on its strategic Crimea peninsula.

Russia kept silent on the accusations, as the crisis deepened between two of Europe’s largest countries.

Bill Clinton, other Democrats distance themselves from Obamacare

In a startling rebuke to President Obama, former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats picked apart Obamacare on Tuesday as privacy concerns about the program’s website multiplied and a video investigation suggested fraudulence among volunteers helping people enroll for government subsidies.

Mr. Clinton called on the president to make good on his repeated and emphatic promise that Americans who like their health insurance plans can keep them. The former president said Mr. Obama should take that step on behalf of consumers whose policies were canceled, “even if it takes a change in the law.”

The White House said Mr. Obama is considering a “range of options” but didn’t commit to Mr. Clinton’s proposal. In a reminder of Mr. Obama’s on-again, off-again relationship with Mr. Clinton, the president’s spokesman pointed out that Mr. Clinton tried and failed to enact universal health care.

The highly public rebuff prompted open speculation that Team Clinton has begun to distance itself from Mr. Obama in preparation for a presidential bid by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. “And so starts the Clinton team slowly walking away from the train wreck that is the Obama presidency,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist in Washington.

Lanny Davis, who was an adviser in the Clinton White House, called such talk “speculation” but said Mr. Obama should heed the increasing call of Democrats to change the health care law.

“A lot of Democrats that I’ve talked to all day are saying just do it — make the fix,” Mr. Davis said. In a column to be published in The Hill newspaper Thursday, Mr. Davis argues that Mr. Obama “might be well advised to admit to trying to do too much too soon in a 1,000+ page ObamaCare bill, passed by an almost entirely partisan vote in 2010 — and revert back to a step-by-step approach to increase required coverage over a longer period of time, in effect reinstating the guarantee that if you have insurance, you can keep your policies.”

“Such a mid-course correction could be a compromise worth trying — saving not only public support for ObamaCare but perhaps the Democratic control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 elections as well,” he writes.

But a Democratic operative aligned with the Obama White House characterized Mr. Clinton’s comments as unhelpful, especially in light of a House vote scheduled for Friday to allow consumers to keep their health care plans.

“These comments leave rank-and-file Democrats on the Hill awfully exposed right now, especially in the House,” the Obama ally said. “Clinton has now made it a much tougher vote than it should be.”

In what could be the start of a Democratic stampede away from the president’s signature program, Sen. Kay R. Hagan of North Carolina said she plans to formally request a government investigation of Obamacare’s botched rollout. Mrs. Hagan, a Democrat whose re-election effort next year has been imperiled by her support of the law, said she wants to “make sure it never happens again.”

With the White House starting to lose Obamacare allies in the president’s own party, a video investigation bolstered Republicans’ concerns that the entitlement program is ripe for fraud. The video produced by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas appears to show Obamacare “navigators” in Dallas advising a man to falsify his application to obtain higher government subsidies and a lower premium.

The encounter between a Project Veritas “investigator” and an Obamacare navigator was taped secretly at the National Urban League’s offices in Dallas. When the undercover investigator says he never reports outside income on his tax returns, the Obamacare volunteer advises him not to get in “trouble” by declaring the income now.

Other Obamacare navigators can be heard informing the man not to disclose that he smokes tobacco, so he can receive a lower insurance premium.

“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” an Obamacare navigator advises the Project Veritas investigator.

Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, called it “yet another broken piece of a deeply flawed system.”

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Obamacare Navigators Counsel Applicants to “Lie”

http://amzn.to/10SdbHd Order BREAKTHROUGH today. The Obama Administration’s campaign to sign everyone up for government healthcare inspired Project Veritas to go straight to the source and investigate what’s really going on.

What we found is shocking: navigators, in positions of public trust, told our undercover journalists to lie and defraud the government. Over and over again.

Yes, as if the roll-out of Obamacare hasn’t been disastrous enough, Project Veritas has caught Obamacare navigators counseling citizens to lie about their income and deceive the IRS, commit fraud on applications by not reporting full health history, and worse.

Despite reassurances that “fraud could not be committed,” clearly, that is not the case.

He was speaking at a 100K bike ride attended by several injured veterans

Added he doesn’t ‘feel sorry for them’ and that they were ‘volunteers’ in war

He was the most powerful man on the planet for eight years. Now former US president George W Bush has spoken frankly about the perils of leadership, saying holding on to power for too long can be ‘corrosive’.

Mr Bush, who served two terms in the White House, said he thought being in charge could ‘dim your vision’ because you get carried away with fame.

He admitted that while he was president he came to understand how ‘fame can become very addictive’.

Outspoken: President Bush said during a 100K bike ride he doesn’t feel sorry for injured vets. Here, the former president stands with one of the riders, retired Staff Sargent Matt DeWitt, who lost his arms on duty in Iraq

Mr Bush said: ‘I’ve had all the fame a man could want… I don’t long for [fame]. Nor do I long for power. I’ve come to realise that power can be corrosive if you’ve had it for too long.

‘It can dim your vision. And so I came to the conclusion that, you know, I don’t long for fame.’

He also confessed he has deliberately avoided the limelight since leaving office

It is unclear whether the comments will help to rehabilitate his image. A poll last year found he is the most unpopular living president, with 54 per cent saying they had an unfavourable view of him.

While 43 per cent said they did like him, this was low compared to the two-thirds who said they still liked former President Bill Clinton.

After he came into office in 2001, Mr Bush embarked on two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have resulted in the deaths of 6,471 American troops. Some 32,000 US soldiers were injured in Iraq and 18,000 in Afghanistan.

At least 132,000 civilians have died in both conflicts.

‘Bad consequences’: Bush, riding with a veteran above, said he knew the injuries many veterans suffer from were part of the ‘bad consequences to war’

If Bill Clinton’s lying about an indiscretion that took place in the White House led to Impeachment proceedings. Then how can anyone justify not taking the same course of action on a lie and the cover up of the death of 4 American citizens???

The consensus thus far had been that Obama’s failure to follow through on campaign promises was not an impeachable offense. The reason being that campaign promises are meant to be broken as they are just a means to an end. In other words they will say whatever the people want to hear to get elected. The comparison made on many occasions is that one cannot compare what Clinton did to what Obama had done because Clinton lied to the People directly and under oath. Well one wonders what the excuses will be now. Since Obama and his administration have lied at every turn to whitewash the part they played in the death of 4 Americans. They have lied to t he people directly and they have lied to Congress. I believe under oath is a definite factor to the latter, is it not , or am I mistaken ?

Now going a bit further we can couple the cover up with the slow and nefarious enroachment of the Federal government upon the Constitutional rights of the American People. Not only by proxy through pressure or self interest via the Congress. But also personally via Executive orders. Obama has slapped The People in the face every time he has sidestepped Congress and or signed an order infringing upon our rights. Being a Constitutional Attorney apparently has given him the delusion that he can re-write it as he sees fit to mold the Nation to a more acceptable America than the Founding Fathers envisioned.

If the manner in which he has blatantly lied, forfeited ,calculatedly twisted the truth and the opportunities to utilize them for the unfolding of a very personal agenda. Is not enough, If the statistics of the vanishing middle class as we watch the growing numbers of working poor and wealthy divide this Nation. If the looming class wars and economic devastation are not enough . Then I would like someone to tell me exactly what would be enough to bring this man to heel and remove him from power!!

~ Desert Rose ~

******************************************************************

Huckabee: Benghazi Scandal Will Cost Obama His Presidency

Tuesday, 07 May 2013 11:25 AM

By Sandy Fitzgerald and Kenneth Hanner

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Influential Republicans are setting their sights on toppling the Obama administration as evidence of a cover-up over the assault on the Benghazi consulate gets stronger.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is now openly talking about impeachment, saying he does not believe Barack Obama will survive the remaining 3½ years of his presidency.

“When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern,” Huckabee said on his radio show Monday.

“As the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling. And before it’s over, I don’t think this president will finish his term unless somehow they can delay it in Congress past the next 3½ years.”

Huckabee isn’t alone in his belief that Obama could be toppled. The pressure is growing just as Congressional hearings on the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks that left four Americans dead are due to start on Wednesday.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who will chair those hearings as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he intends to make the president “come clean.”

“The administration has made a claim that for classified reasons they changed the story,” Issa told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “We believe right now that may be the biggest lie of all, and we intend on making the president come clean as to, quote, ‘What the classified reasons are that would justify lying to the American people.'”

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added to the onslaught against the administration’s handling of the assault.

“Political manipulation is rampant here,” said Graham in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “The dam’s about to break on Benghazi.”

And former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton told Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg on Monday that he too believes the growing scandal could lead to the “unraveling” of the Obama administration.

The most exclusive club in the world has a similarly exclusive price tag – nearly $3.7 million, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That’s how much the federal government spent last year on the four living ex-presidents and one presidential widow.

Topping the list in 2012 was George W. Bush, who got just over $1.3 million last year.

Under the Former Presidents Act, previous inhabitants of the Oval Office are given an annual pension equivalent to a Cabinet secretary’s salary – about $200,000 last year, plus $96,000 a year for a small office staff. Taxpayers also pick up the tab for other items like staff benefits, travel, office space and postage.

The $3.7 million taxpayers shelled out in 2012 is about $200,000 less than in 2011, and the sum in 2010 was even higher. It’s a drop in the bucket compared with the trillions the federal government spends each year.

Still, with ex-presidents able to command eye-popping sums for books, speaking engagements and the like in their post-White House years, the report raises questions about whether the U.S. should provide such generous subsidies at a time when spending cuts and the deficit are forcing lawmakers and federal agencies to seek ways to cut back.

Report: George W. Bush has most expenses among former presidents for 2012

By Josh Lederman, Published: March 25

Being the leader of the free world is an expensive proposition. And the costs don’t stop once you leave the White House.The government spent nearly $3.7 million on former presidents in 2012, according to an analysis released by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That covers a pension, compensation and benefits for office staffers, and other costs.

The costliest former president? George W. Bush, who clocked in last year at just more than $1.3 million.

The $3.7 million taxpayers shelled out in 2012 is about $200,000 less than in 2011. All of it is a drop in the bucket compared with the trillions the federal government spends each year.

Still, former presidents are able to command eye-popping sums for books, speaking engagements and the like in their post-White House years, and the report comes at a time when spending cuts and the deficit are forcing lawmakers and federal agencies to cut back.

Under the Former Presidents Act, previous inhabitants of the Oval Office are given a $200,000 annual pension — the equivalent to a Cabinet secretary’s salary — plus $96,000 a year for a small office staff. The government also picks up the tab for costs such as travel, office space and postage.

Departing presidents get additional help in the first years after they leave office, one reason Bush’s costs were higher than those of other living former presidents. The most recent president to leave the White House, Bush was granted almost $400,000 for 8,000 square feet of office space in Dallas, plus $85,000 in telephone costs. Another $60,000 went to travel costs.

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

His and her jets: The President and his wife, who are spending nine days on Martha’s Vineyard, have come under fire for travelling on separate planes

The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of holiday in the past year, including a $375,000 break in Spain and a four-day ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the Sebastian hotel.

And the first family’s nine-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard is also proving costly, with rental of the Blue Heron Farm property alone costing an estimated $50,000 a week.

The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

‘The vacations are totally Michelle’s idea. She’s like a junkie. She can’t schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next – all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.’

Traveling in style: Mrs Obama during her $375,000 trip to Spain last year

The two parties of Big Government

NetRightDaily

By Rebekah Rast — Would the author of the New Deal be pleased with the state of Social Security 80 years later? Did President Johnson, when approving of the Medicare amendment in 1965, know of the volatility of such a program and the government dependency it would create?

While Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Johnson did what they thought best for the nation at the time, they must have known that to inject even a little government spending into peoples’ personal lives would only lead to more spending and a new kind of government dependency.

Because this government largesse can no longer be afforded, entitlement programs are in trouble. Projections have shown that if not dealt with Medicare as we know it might not be around in the next decade, with the trust fund set to run out in 2024.

Both sides of the political aisle see fit to fund a federal health insurance program for America’s seniors, and both sides champion a need for some kind of reform to save it.

Taxpayers subsidize big banks handing out $83 bln annually

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the risks of having banks that are too big to fail on Tuesday. According to a recent Bloomberg study, some of the biggest banks are receiving $83 billion in subsidies each year. Bernanke appeared before the Senate Banking Committee and was forced to answer whether or not these financial institutions should be forced to reimburse taxpayers for the bailouts. Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research with the Reason Foundation, breaks down the numbers.

Personal information stolen from several email accounts belonging to people close to the Bush family reveals the nation’s 43rd president has developed an affinity for painting himself bathing, of all things.

Photos included in an information dump turned over to The Smoking Gun include President George H.W. Bush in the hospital, the elder Bush posing with President Bill Clinton, a family photo of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and even President George W. Bush posing with a cardboard cutout of himself wearing a mustache and beret.

A hacker going by the name “Guccifer” claimed the stolen messages include addresses, phone numbers and email addresses that go directly to both former presidents and their families, along with a security code for a gate outside the younger Bush’s home in Dallas.Read Full Article Here

(NaturalNews) With huge fanfare and an overdose of propaganda, the U.S. government is announcing it’s going to reform school lunches and vending machines to eliminate junk beverages like sodas. “Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead,” reports the Washington Post.

Except, here’s the problem: We heard this same hoax six years ago when Bill Clinton was widely applauded for achieving the very same “reform” back then.

Forbes.com practically drooled over the “leadership” of Clinton when it announced, in 2006:

“Under the agreement, the companies have agreed to sell only water, unsweetened juice and low-fat milk to elementary and middle schools while high schools would be allowed diet drinks, unsweetened teas, flavored water, and low-calorie sports drinks.”

Er, hold on a sec. Why is the USDA saying it’s going to ban sugary sodas in 2013 when Forbes.com reported that Bill Clinton already solved the problem in 2006?

Two days after the 9/11 attacks, during a meeting of Bush’s closest advisers, Cofer Black declared the country’s enemies must be left with ‘flies walking across their eyeballs’. It was an image of death so striking that Black became known among the President’s inner circle as ‘the flies on the eyeballs guy’. Unlike its allies – the UK, France, Spain and Israel – the US had little experience of serious terrorist attacks on its own territory, nor any understanding of the need for a patient response. Bush was impressed by Black. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, could see that the President wanted to kill somebody. The problem, as successive attorneys general had warned one president after another, was that they did not enjoy unfettered powers of life and death over the nation’s enemies. The CIA had been banned from carrying out assassinations since 1976.

The President turned to his Department of Defense and found that it had no cogent, off-the-shelf plan for responding to an attack of this nature on the United States. The CIA, on the other hand, did have something in its arsenal: it had the rendition program.

Since 1987, the CIA had been quietly apprehending terrorists and ‘rendering’ them to the US for prosecution, without any regard for lawful extradition processes. In 1995, President Bill Clinton – apparently with the full encouragement of his vice-president, Al Gore – agreed that a number of terrorists could be taken to a third country, including countries known to use torture, a process that would come to be known as extraordinary rendition.

Mike Scheuer, the CIA officer who started that programme, faced few objections from Clinton’s national security advisers when he began taking prisoners to Egypt, where they could be interrogated under torture. ‘They just didn’t want to know what we were doing,’ he says.

Before 9/11, however, there were limits. In 1998, for example, the CIA had drawn up a plan to kidnap Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and take him to Egypt. A shipping container was installed inside a Hercules aircraft and inside that was bolted a dentist’s chair fitted with restraints. The CIA were all ready to go when, at the last moment, the FBI persuaded Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, that bin Laden’s inevitable death at the hands of the Egyptians would be an act of murder and that US officials would be responsible. Reno vetoed the plan.

By 13 September, with a still-unknown number of Americans dead and the President wanting action, all such legal squeamishness had vanished. President Bush and Dick Cheney both believed al-Qaida had succeeded because government lawyers had been expecting the CIA to do its job with one hand tied behind its back. Bush said as much to his attorney general, John Ashcroft, when he warned him: ‘Don’t ever let this happen again.’ So when the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, went to brief the President a few days after 9/11 and began to talk of the need to gather evidence for future prosecutions, he was promptly silenced by Ashcroft. Prosecutions were beside the point, Ashcroft said. All that mattered was stopping another attack.

That night, Cofer Black locked himself away at his office at Langley and within five days had drawn up plans for the CIA’s response. It would entail a vast expansion of the rendition programme. Hundreds of al-Qaida suspects would be tracked down and abducted from their homes and hiding places in eighty different countries. The agency would decide who was to be killed and who was to be kept alive in a network of secret prisons, outside the US, where they would be systematically tormented until every one of their secrets had been delivered up. The United States had been blindsided by al-Qaida on 9/11 and that situation would not be permitted to occur a second time.

Black’s plan was presented to the President and his war cabinet in a series of meetings during the days after the attacks. On Monday 17 September, Bush signed off the paperwork: with a stroke of his pen the CIA was granted the power of life and death over al-Qaida suspects and could arrange for men to be detained and tortured indefinitely. All this, Bush later said, was to remain invisible.

A few hours afterwards there was a brief glimpse of the manner in which the United States would disregard the restraints of international law when responding to the attacks. Speaking at a press conference, Bush said: ‘There’s an old poster out West that says, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”‘ The President then checked himself before saying that those responsible for the murderous attacks should be brought to justice.

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